Accessory News

The OnePlus One is celebrating its one year anniversary. We will forget that this one year old device is not really a flagship anymore and is still not yet properly available and join in the festivities of celebration. And to make sure you are in the right mood too, OnePlus has a number of special offers running at the moment.

Remember a couple of months ago when all the mobile heavyweights were launching smartphones? HTC was one of the company's that was reportedly ready to jump on the wearable trend and even had a product ready. However, the Taiwanese company decided to pull the plug on its first smartwatch, saying at the time that the market was not ready and was too crowded. That decision was upheld, but the company is not turning its back on wearables completely and will launch a smartwatch in March.

IDC is one of the most prominent market researchers and the organization has turned its attention to the Canadian market and is looking forward to 2015. While Canada is not necessarily a hot bed for tech activity, the data for the country seems to point to a similar worldwide trend that will happen in the coming 12 months. IDC says that wearable sales will increase sharply on the back of the Apple Watch, something that is widely predicted on a global scale.

Sony was one of the first to jump on the wearable trend with its SmartWatch devices, paving the way for other companies. The Japanese brand is now marketing the SmartWatch 3, a wearable that stands alongside Android Wear products with much the same specs and features as each other. However, Sony is apparently ready to spread its wearable wings with another smartwatch, one with an e-paper screen.

Microsoft's Band has been with us a couple of weeks now and it has managed to be a dividing device. Microsoft says it has sold well, while some reports say stock was very limited, while the general consensus seems to be that the wearable is very much a first device in an evolution. It feels like a prototype many reviews have said, but after spending some time with it I think it is more of a vehicle for Microsoft's Health suite.

Wall Street is surely banking on the Apple Watch becoming the breakout smartwatch hit that will bring the niche firmly into the tech mainstream. At the moment smartwatch sales figures are counted in the hundreds of thousands, with the entire industry only accounting for 7 million sales through the first half of 2014. Yes, that has improved with the launch of Android Wear, but still the wearable trend has yet to take off.

We are running out of companies who are NOT making smartwatches, even the ones who do not currently have a wearable have signalled their intentions to do so in the near future. Which leads us on to Xiaomi, the Chinese company that has shook the smartphones industry (especially Samsung) over the last two years.

Microsoft's first ever wearable (the Microsoft Band) has been available for a couple of weeks now and it went of stock rather quickly. So, does that mean that it was a big success or were there only limited numbers of the product released for sale? Well, that depends on who you listen to.

Google Glass, remember that? Launched as one of the first multi-function wearables the eye glass product was considered the future of mobile tech but has actually fallen into some kind of tech no-man's land. Innovation on this scale usually needs the backing of a market, or other companies weighing in with their products, but in the case of Glass, Google's innovation went by unnoticed by other companies.

How many tech designers do you know? Do you know who designed the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 for example, or even who had the influence for HTC to come up with the beauty that is the One M7/M8. These guys and gals may well create the mobile tech that you desire, but they are largely anonymous (isn't that how it should be?), but with Apple things are different.